


Aquatica

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Jellyfish, Other, POV Nonhuman, Romance, Xenophilia, fishes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23691793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: She drifted alone, nameless, apart from her kind.
Relationships: Stygiomedusa gigantea/Thalassobathia pelagica
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	Aquatica

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elijah_was_a_prophet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elijah_was_a_prophet/gifts).



> There's something about watching jellyfish swim that's hypnotic and almost sensual.

She drifted alone, nameless, apart from her kind. There were meetings of course, for her kind were not as uncommon as others. The soft bumping of bells, the braiding of arms in the embrace of like meeting like was something she knew well.

And it did nothing for her.

There was the moment of understanding when she detected the scent of others, a taste spread across the whole of her. This was one like her, she knew before the contact that might or might not come at the whim of the unseen currents that carried her.

Some, more determined than her, would pulse and push to hasten a meeting that she could not bring herself to care if it did or did not happen.

She never made the effort to move towards others, nor did she move away, seek a new current to carry her in a new direction.

Knowing her kind was one thing, enjoying it was another, for she was sure that there were things that she could find joy in.

Even if she had yet to find what those things were.

It was the knowing that drove her as much as the currents, surely as the movements of her arms carried food to the mouth at the center of her bell, the currents carried her to something, be it death or an answer. Like all of her kind she had faith in the currents, if nothing else.

There were things different than her, not just things that wore similar forms while lacking the taste and scent that meant kinship, but other things, far more different than her.

She had encountered them before in all their myriad forms, or so she chose to imagine.

Even if each encounter was something new.

Small, sharp bodies, so different from her own. They had a taste, a smell, though not as nuanced as those of her kind.

She was not meant to know them as she did her own and that fascinated her. Deliberate and rapid they flashed by the periphery of her awareness and were gone.

Partial understanding, limited by what she knew from the touch of her arms against something impossibly unyielding.

She wanted to wrap and hold and know, but their forms were strong and torsional, set rather than flowing.

These creatures did not live along currents, but moved of their own will constantly, each movement taking actual effort.

It frightened her, that things could live in such a way, every movement a fight, simply living an active struggle to find ones way.

Paradoxically, she fled towards that terror, yearned for it. Not to be like them, but to understand them, to know them, endlessly varied and alien as they were.

It was in a chance meeting with one of her kin, a forceful communication of pheromones, taste pushing itself to where she did not want it.

Arms twisting too tightly, pressed bell to bell as various softnesses fluttered and pulsed in a way that she did not desire.

And all through it an intruder was present, sleek and gliding at the current that buoyed them, tapered form just right for braiding through arms that wrapped too tightly for escape.

The intruder was small, darting there and gone, smelling strongly of the other, but under that possessing something of its own.

It was as alien as all the things it resembled, but had to it a taste of familiarity.

The other ignored the intruder, as one would ignore the touch of one’s own arms doubling back onto one’s bell when tumbled from one current to another.

The intruder belonged in some way to her fellow and in that she was intrigued.

She tolerated the touch of the other for the presence of the intruder and inquired through the sliding of arms and the convulsions of her bell.

Of course the other had no answer, the intruder had, as was the tendency of things like it, appeared of its own volition.

What a terrifying concept! To move purely through the effort of will and purpose, not just for an instant, but for long enough to find something and then to stay.

Given how passing encounters with her own kind intended to occur the simple effort of thinking of moving deliberately long enough to meet someone or thing was exhausting, the idea of chasing to remain with them unthinkable.

And yet the thought would not drift from her once it occurred. It clung to her with unseen arms.

She trembled in the arms of her fellow, not simply from the touch, but from the weariness that came from imagining constantly moving towards or away from such encounters. It drained her, for it was something she could imagine herself doing far too easily.

If she caught taste of an answer, to the nameless, formless thing that she sought, she was sure that her bell would pulse towards it, her arms bending in the currents that she moved across, trying to reach against water stronger than they were.

She would twist and fold and roll, as one did when moving across currents, struggling with the effort of oneself being dragged across two places at once.

But perhaps that was how she lived her life, pulled by the fighting currents of what she knew and the unknown that she longed for.

So she endured the touch of her fellow for the sake of the presence of the intruder.

Afterwards they drifted on the same current for a time, pheromones exchanged in vague conversation, but neither trying to truly contact the other.

All meetings were in passing, never to happen again. The currents would not allow it.

The intruder, of course, stayed with the other, though she wished that it would drift to her.

Or put in the effort to move to her, for it could do that if it wished.

Eventually they floated apart and she was relieved to be alone again, free of the troublesome thoughts that always came with a companion, however fleeting.

Alone she could drift and think and let her thoughts flow into the proper order, just as a gentle current would smooth her arms out behind her, ripping softly as small things touched them and were carried to her mouth.

Her thoughts moved in the same naturally way, rippling back to the intruder.

To call it such wasn’t true.

It wasn’t an intruder. To the contrary, it was more welcome than any of her fellows had been. Strange and terrifying, yet made more intriguing by its sense of almost familiarity.

It was in its own way, more familiar than one of her kind could be. It could stay and follow and linger and in that have the chance to become something more than happenstance.

She drifted, not without purpose, as one not of her kind might think, but with the hope that it might bring her across the path of something.

Currents did cross after all, carrying with them strange scents and even stranger things.

Things like her, yet not.

And things so unlike her that she lacked the words for them.

If she was lucky she would find the formless thing that she sought, which, as it would turn out, did have form.

Drifting thoughts condensed into awareness, for though she didn’t sleep, she did dream. Something had bumped against her bell.

Not the soft, sliding touch of her own kind, but something hard, sharp.

A tap then, rather than a bump.

It was one of the strange creatures, small and fast.

She expected it would be gone, but there came another tap.

The edges of her bell curled, for this wasn’t the first time that she’d experienced such a thing. There was a place on the smooth curve of her bell where the edge ruffled in such a way that it would never become smooth. There one of the creatures had pulled away a piece of her before darting off and vanishing.

If such an attack happened she would push away and be gone.

But it never came.

The creature bumped against her, carefully feeling out the edges of her bell in a rapid staccato, a strange parody of the smooth flow of touch when those of her kind met.

It was imitating the touch of greeting and familiarity, though the movement and patterns were wrong.

It was too small to fully initiate contact.

It lacked arms to twist together.

Yet when the smell of it reached her, it tasted almost familiar.

There was a sense of impossibility to it, like the infinitesimal chance of meeting someone twice.

The taste of it, when it stopped investigating her bell and moved to weave through her arms, was that of the intruder.

Not exactly, but close enough to believe that it was of the intruder’s kind.

Her arms curled loosely around it, but its form was such that it did not become entangled as other such creatures might.

Its whole body, small and inflexible, moved through her arms as though trying to entwine with her.

She investigated it with her arms as it examined her with its whole body, slowly moving up to her bell.

Small things lived there, constant and galling companions in her otherwise perfect solitude. They stole food from her arms before it could reach her mouth and no convulsions, no matter how powerful, could ever dislodge them once they found their way.

Was the intruder another thief then?

It tapped against the underside of her bell, a soft and fragile area that only the small things ever touched.

The intruder lingered there, moving with her, sheltered by her form from the current that pulled her, yet able to move in concert with her through the rapid fluttering of small parts it possessed.

It took time for her to learn the feel of those small parts, to realize that they were there, so fine that they resembled her arms, yet small and barely there, as hard and sharp as the rest of it.

The creature made its own currents inside of her, moving within her as she moved through the world around them.

And it lingered long enough for her to know it, to learn its form.

Its presence becoming more and more familiar, its movements a part of her. There were parts of it that moved, parts of it that didn’t. Bits that were as sharp as its movements that occasionally touched her, parts that were so smooth that they might not have been there.

Small as it was, it could live easily in the shelter of her bell, but there were times where it ventured out.

Times when it moved along the perimeter of her bell, little fluttering parts brushing against the edges, feeling the size of her.

At times it would linger at the place where the ruffle marred the smoothness of her bell. There it would twist and flutter against the imperfection, the meanings of its actions unknown to her.

Other times it would travel the length of her arms, each in turn, in an exhausting journey, yet it never tired from it.

Again and again it would move the length of her, weaving between her grasp, sliding like a current that spun rather than flowed, the flow of its body twisting her arms in a solitary touch of greeting punctuated by the occasional sharpness that seemed to be its nature.

But it wasn’t solitary, was it?

The intruder was with her, moving her in small ways.

Always it would return to her bell, and gradually she became accustomed to its sharp touches there, hard, but never injuring.

Slowly, once she was used to the strangeness of the touching she became aware of something.

A feeling of absence so strong that it was like a feeling of presence.

The constant annoyances, the thieves pulling food away from her mouth were gone.

Or mostly gone.

If she focused she could feel their movements, but there were so few of them, far less than she could remember.

In that realization came another.

There was a pattern to the intruder’s touches within her bell.

A sharp tap, the slightest pull, and then one of the nuisances was gone.

Its movements along her arms then made sense, as she filtered food from everything else drifting in the water, so it separated the undesirable from the desirable on her arms.

It brought a freedom from discomfort that she had never known and in doing so changed her world.

The creature was no intruder, but a welcome guest and infinitely fascinating.

Just as her, it had an intelligence, an awareness, of its own, but so different.

It would respond to things unknown and undetectable to her, without warning darting from her arms to the shelter of her bell, frantically fluttering in a way she could not, so fast that there were times when it seemed the mere effort of trying to comprehend such rapid movements within herself threatened to tear her apart.

Such things happened, there were stories of it.

Individuals who lost arms or large portions of their bells from trying to grasp something too large.

Or the occasional drifting corpse, shredded to pieces so fine by the passing or deliberate efforts of something impossibly vast.

She had never encountered either, but the stories were well enough known, shared during encounters often enough that she believed them.

To imagine, arms moving completely without volition, motionless bells curled or spread without purpose, pulled out of shape by the uncaring currents that carried them. The edges of her bell curled at the thought and her guest brushed against her, having learned the scent of her fear, but not knowing its cause.

They were alone together now, her and her guest.

Each with their own thoughts and no way of sharing them.

Except there were times when it would, without reason mimic the movements of greeting, circle inside of her bell, pressing its smooth, firm body in places that she could not understand. There was a pattern, around her mouth, to the edges of her bell and back, then across the ring of parts rimming her mouth.

It knew to some degree, but lacked the right scent and taste, the feeling of familiarity to accomplish anything other than delighting her with its attempts.

There was joy in its touch, a feeling of longing satisfied.

When she encountered her fellows the guest was there, weaving through tentacles, sharing her greeting, but also circling protectively over her bell, small fluttering parts sweeping back and forth against her.

Sometimes they would encounter others with their own guests, or creatures of its kind alone. When one of her kind and one of its were paired there would sometimes be a dance of rapid movements, the way such creatures must have known each other and exchanged their separate thoughts.

She asked others of her kind about their guests and opinions differed greatly. Some were uninterested, accepting the guest merely as something there, some were intrigued at least about where they came from. None were interested in the thoughts of their guests, why they came and why they stayed, beyond food and shelter being basic answers, as though something so swift would ever need a place to be away from things.

When the two of them encountered one of its kind alone it grew fierce and possessive, driving them away.

Its actions at those times always sent a thrill through her, not that it was driving others away, but that it had no desire to share the shroud of her bell with any others.

Her guest was hers alone and she was its. Though it could seek others of its kind, swimming across and against currents, it stayed with her, at home in her bell, weaving through her arms.

Touching places within that only it could.

They were alone together, but together they were complete.


End file.
